nothing like a trail of blood
by faithunbreakable
Summary: There's someone missing. Dark AU from the end of First Class. Gen. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I wish I owned them. If wishes were horses… Nothing is mine. Just borrowing. Title from SIXX am's Life is Beautiful.

A/N: This is what happens when you give me an awesome movie and then put me in front of a computer at one in the morning.

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**nothing like a trail of blood (to find your way back home)**

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X and Magneto, leading their race.

Gathering mutants, teaching them, raising them. Creating an army. One day, one day soon, so soon, they will finally rise. They will rise and mankind will fall under the hands and minds of their two leaders. X and Magneto. Oldest and most powerful of their race.

They say that together, mind and metal, the two men have taken down armies. Together they're terrifying and awe inspiring. Together, they're death.

_Mutant_, they say, _and proud._

_We will take what is ours,_ they say, _and we will not be beaten down. We will not withdraw. We will not cower._

That is how it's always been. X and Magneto and the dawn of the mutant race, carried on their backs.

But there are some, so few, that tell another story. The lieutenants, the oldest amongst them. Beast and Havoc and Banshee, who were once Hank and Alex and Sean. They were just boys, they say, when it happened. When everything changed.

_Mutant and proud_, they say. And, _There's someone missing._

There was a girl, they say, one of them. Blue skin, red hair, eyes like a cat, like gold and fire. She was beautiful, they say, so beautiful.

_She died. She died, and everything changed._

Beast strokes the fur on his arms some days, a wistful look in his own golden eyes. _All that's left of her, _he'll say._ This and her death._

Her death changed everything, the death of this girl. One girl, blue and red and gold. In life, her name was Raven. In death, she is Mystique. Virgin Mary of their race. Mother of the war.

_A sunny day by the beach_, they tell, sometimes, when neither X nor Magneto are there to silence them. They sound weary then, like old men telling of war. They are. They were only boys. How many have they lost since then? Since her? Since the first girl? How many friends and lovers and siblings?

A sunny day by the beach and the world teetering on the edge of an atomic war. They fought to stop it, to stop a man named Shaw, named Schmidt. A man named Doktor in the nightmares of a long dead boy named Erik. Erik, who had a friend, a friend named Charles, who wanted to change the world. They died, too, that day by the beach.

The girl, the raven, fought to protect one of the humans' ships from attack. She fought to save their lives. She fought _for them._

_She wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to stay with the others. But Azazel took her with him. An accident. Nothing more. She wasn't supposed to be there. Charles told her…_

But she was there and she fought, they say, bravely.

_Humans fear what they don't know, have they taught you that, yet? And what they fear, they hate._

All they saw were freaks. Freaks fighting on their ship. She told them, on her knees, hands raised, that she was protecting them. Helping. _Please. I mean no harm._

They shot her anyway.

_Charles felt it. His mind… he was there, when she died. He was with her._

They said, _Don't matter what you are. You're a filthy freak._

And they fired.

Her blood was red. That surprised them. Her blood was red and they stood over her bleeding body, said, _It wasn't even human._

Blue and red and gold. _Mutant and proud_.

Charles felt her death and when the other boy, the boy named Erik, became Magneto and said, _Let's kill them all_, he didn't say no.

He said, _Not now._

Because the girl who was Raven and is now Mystique, the martyr, the sacrifice, she was his sister. She was both their sister and they loved her and she died. She died protecting humans and the boy, the one called Charles, he couldn't protect them anymore then.

X doesn't condone bloodshed. Everyone in the Brotherhood knows that.

But he never stops it, either.

Once upon a time there was boy named Charles who thought mutants and humans could live together in peace. Then the humans shot his sister in the head for being blue and red and gold and beautiful and tired of being scared. For being _proud_.

They shot her and she died and with her died his faith in them.

_He couldn't hate them. He knew them too well to hate them, Charles did,_ Beast once says, in the dead of night, _But he couldn't protect the ones that killed her. So when Erik said, _let's set the world on fire_, Charles didn't stop him._

_So you see, the world was different once. Could be different now._

_But there's someone missing_.

A girl. A girl who died and two boys who lived and became men. The leaders of their race, the most powerful and feared and dangerous. X and Magneto. They remember a girl with blue skin and red hair, remember that she didn't believe in humans but fought for them anyway and died by their hand.

Magneto was taught to hate at an early age. X was taught not to love far later.

Separately, the lieutenants wager, they would not have made it far. X too kind, Magneto too angry.

But together.

The human world is going to fall, soon, so soon. The mutant Brotherhood, this army forged of children and outcasts, will rise. Mankind will fall.

Only because there's someone missing.

_Mutant and proud_, she said and died.

And they took her words and made them their religion.

But that's only a story, remembered by few. Those that were there know better than to speak of it, of the people who stepped foot on that beach and never left it. Erik and Charles and Raven. There are only X and Magneto now, leaders of their race, and a dead girl, whose memory hounds their every step.

There is only war now.

_Maybe it's better_, Havoc whispers to Banshee as they patrol the base one day in December.

_What's better?_

Havoc shrugs. _That the kids don't know how different it might have been. That there could have been peace._

Banshee laughs and the snow under their feet vibrates. He sobers quickly, says nothing. They have an army of thousands. Tens of thousands, each and every one with a unique gift.

There isn't one, not a single one amongst all of them, that can turn back time.

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End file.
